Philosophy

Nihilism: the philosophy that doesn’t matter

Posted by Kenneth on

What is nihilism?

This is a question with many different correct answers. People have used the term to refer to different things. For me, it represents what I would call more specifically “philosophical” nihilism, a combination of philosophical positions that could loosely be said to form a worldview. These positions are as follows:

  • Ontological nihilism (“nothing exists”)
  • Existential nihilism (“nothing matters”)
  • Moral nihilism (“nothing is right or wrong”)

With ontological nihilism, I don’t take this to mean literally nothing exists, but rather the kinds of things humans talk about specifically don’t exist. What does it mean for something to exist? In this context, what I mean by that is not only that a thing is independent of minds which might be able to perceive it, but also that it is essential that it belong to the “ontology of the universe,” so to speak. To me ontological nihilism is about being able to have a consistent worldview with an ontology consisting of nothing other than “reality.”

Existential nihilism is one of the things people often mean when they just say “nihilism.” It is the view that nothing has an inherent purpose for existing, in particular one’s own life has no inherent purpose and no inherent reason for being. It could also be summed up as “life has no meaning.” We are thrown into the world without our consent; we find that, compared to the designed objects around us, we do not exist for anything. We just exist.

Moral nihilism, like the two previous nihilisms, refers to the nonexistence of any inherent morality. This is different from moral relativism which generally places value on others’ perspectives. Moral nihilism is sometimes described as “everything is permitted.” I would say instead that there are things people do not permit, in that there are many things that many people will try to stop you from doing or penalize you for doing. Moral nihilism says that there is no “ultimate grounding” for any moral claims.

There are many arguments against these positions, but the ones I think are most important are those that claim that nihilism is variously self-contradictory, self-undermining, paralyzing to the individual, or impossible to live out practically. I will explain why I think these are mistaken and based on a misunderstanding of nihilism.

Ontology

First, can we talk about things that don’t exist? It depends on what it means to exist. When I say that something does not exist, I mean it like Santa Clause doesn’t exist. But Santa Clause is of course a real character, and he has a history and distinctive properties. Everything imaginary exists as something that is imaginary. But this is a phenomenon; it is something that happens rather than something that really exists. With respect to the possible semantic argument and language use more generally, I accept that “exist” means different things in different contexts, and there’s no problem with using the word in such a way that “everything exists.” The idea that nouns refer to fictional things is called fictionalism. It’s an interpretation of how language and reasoning can work in the absence of real objects to talk about.

Second, why might it be the case that nothing exists? Human ontologies are ways of dividing reality into distinct parts. The realist perspective is that there are natural ways of dividing things up. Things fall into categories called “natural kinds.” The question is, how can we tell if something is a natural kind? Fish, as a kind of animal that includes things like salmon, gobies, sharks, etc. but excludes amniotic tetrapods like reptiles and mammals, is not a natural kind. Since the advent of evolutionary biology, it has been discovered that this not a group of animals that are all more closely related to one another than they are to land animals. Humans are more closely related to salmon than salmon are to sharks, and we are more closely related to gobies than gobies are to salmon. The only way to group these animals together is with a list of ad hoc criteria. It is clear that the grouping was based on naïve human perception and not on how nature actually works. More recently, it was discovered that what we previously thought of as crustaceans is not a natural kind, as it should include all insects in order to consistently include all the animals we ordinarily think of as crustaceans (or else they have to be excluded using ad hoc criteria). The concept of species is not even a natural kind, nor is it even a single concept. Taking this line of thought to its furthest possible conclusion, we have reason to be skeptical about the way humans categorize things generally. We tend do so in a way that is salient to us based on our perception and goals, not in a way that comports with nature.

There is another argument regarding a subtype of ontological nihilism called mereological nihilism. This is the view that objects with proper parts do not exist. For example, does a car “really” exist except as an assemblage of parts? If so, what is the nature of this independent existence? When does the car come into or out of existence as it’s being assembled or disassembled? This is related to questions of vagueness. A classic example is a heap of sand: a single grain of sand is not a heap. Two grains of sand is not a heap. Three grains of sand is not a heap. However, 1,000,000,000 grains of sand is a heap. At what point then, when adding individual grains of sand one by one, does a collection of grains of sand become a heap of sand? In short, there is no number of grains past which it can be called a heap. Heap is a vague term. This arguably makes it not well-defined. One solution to this problem is to say that “heap” is merely a a convenient term for a loosely defined range of numbers of sand grains; i.e., the heap itself does not exist, it refers to the collection of grains of sand (its constituent proper parts). When we look closely, most ordinary objects have this same problem and it can be solved the same way. We could say that a couch does not exist, it’s just a label for a collection of molecules arranged “couchwise.” Under this view, the only truly existing objects are things like fundamental particles of physics. However, we have some reason to be skeptical of our current description of fundamental particles. In general, the position of mereological nihilism is that the vast majority of objects humans talk about do not exist.

Existence

The foundational belief of existentialism is that existence precedes essence. Let’s first consider what it means for essence to precede existence. A chair, for example, was conceived of as an idea prior to its creation. It was made to fulfill a specific purpose. The essence of what it means to be a chair preceded the construction of the actual chair. A natural object, such as a boulder, has no purpose. It was not designed by nature to be heavy, or to have a rough surface, and so on, it just is those things; they are aspects of its existence. Living organisms are the same. Contrary to the language that is sometimes use to describe evolution, organisms do not have the purpose of reproducing, that is just what they do much of the time as part of their existence. Likewise, individual body parts and organs do not have purposes. It is not, properly speaking, the purpose of the heart to pump blood; that is simply what it does. When we say that a person’s heart is malfunctioning and not pumping blood effectively, this is in light of our own desires for what we want things to be doing. One might equally say that a river is malfunctioning when it floods. It is not, flooding is just something that happens to rivers naturally.

Most importantly for humans, we ourselves do not have any purpose. We can describe the what and how of our existence, but not the why. In existentialism and related philosophies, the answer is to create purpose and meaning for ourselves.

This notably contradicts certain religious perspectives. In most sects of Christianity, humans (and indeed boulders) were conceived of by God prior to their existence and do serve some kind of ultimate divine purpose. This belief requires faith, and it does not actually constitute an argument against existential nihilism, just a rejection of it.

Morality

First: ontological nihilism and existential nihilism have no moral consequences. A person could consistently hold either of these views in combination with a wide variety of different, mutually exclusive moral positions. It does seem natural to conclude, however, that if humans have no independent existence and no purpose, then no hypothetical objective moral standards could apply to them. Here’s the kicker: moral nihilism also has no moral consequences. In fact, all three forms of nihilism discussed here have no normative consequences whatsoever. They don’t say that you should do this or shouldn’t do that.

Nihilism is a set of claims about what the universe is like. By Hume’s guillotine, you cannot derive an “ought” statement from an “is” statement without assuming some kind of goal or moral compass, and nihilism has neither goals nor a moral compass. This means that nihilism does not say one should go against the dominant moral code of one’s society, nor does it say one should behave hedonistically, nor even does it say that one should believe in nihilism. According to nihilism, everyone in the world is living lives perfectly consistent with nihilism. It’s not possible to live in a way that is inconsistent with nihilism. It is a philosophy with no logical consequences for behavior.

So certainly there is no issue to be had with the notion of “living as a (true) nihilist.” Whether it, as a belief, has psychological impacts on an individual is frankly irrelevant to how true or false it is. Finally, then, is nihilism self-defeating?

I don’t think so. Nihilism accounts for the not-quite-accurate way in which humans talk about things. In other words, one can believe humans do not exist as an ontological nihilist while also discussing what humans are like as an existential nihilist. There is no problem with talking informally about the purpose of a human heart; humans will always conceptualize things in a way that is salient to us and our wants and needs. So even if nihilism is described in terms that nihilism itself says don’t refer to anything, it’s not an issue. That’s just humans doing our best to communicate our ideas based on our imperfect understanding of reality.

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